The Force Awakens: The Butterfly Effect
by He who is AWESOME
Summary: The Butterfly Effect: changing one small thing can have big consequences. Let's apply this to the beginning of Force Awakens. Kind of a fix fic, but not really; I explain inside, but that's why I picked 'Parody' as the genre (closest to what I was going for).


**Once again, I had a teeny-tiny thought in bed 3 nights ago that led to a quick story. That's two posts in one week! That probably hasn't happened since** _ **Marathon Files**_ **, aka several forevers ago. I'm also a massive Star Wars nerd and I've been on this site for years, so hey, better late than never, right?**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, and –regardless of your feelings on** _ **The Last Jedi**_ **\- it's probably better off in Disney's hands than it ever would be in mine (their mistake of giving the license to EA being the obvious exception to that statement).**

 **The Force Awakens: The Butterfly Effect**

"You have to hide."

"You have to leave. Go."

Poe Dameron ran, with BB-8 on his heels, past villagers scrambling to get to defensive positions as the First Order's landing craft rapidly approached. The ships landed in a line in front of the village, unloading Stormtroopers who began firing upon the village as soon as the door dropped.

"Come on, BB-8, hurry!" Poe called to his droid companion as they crested a dune and reached their T-70 X-Wing, the village behind them being consumed in a firefight. As soon as he was in the pilot seat, Poe began pressing buttons and flipping switches to start the ship.

"Shield!" he muttered under his breath, the thought occurring to him that he should activate the deflector shield before the Stormtroopers noticed his ship…

"Blast that X-Wing!"

… Y'know, like that. Just in the nick of time Poe flipped the switch to raise his shields. Good thing, too, as he would've been unable to take off had the Stormtroopers' blasterfire hit that spot unshielded. The engines finished their priming sequence.

"Let's see how you like some of this!" Poe fired his engines full-throttle, the thrust knocking several Stormtroopers onto their backs and kicking up a nice cloud of sand to obscure their vision. The X-Wing took off. As much as he'd like to help –maybe a quick strafing run- Poe knew the longer he stayed in the system, the lower his odds of completing his mission. So it was with a heavy heart that Poe left the village on Jakku to its fate and jumped into hyperspace.

 _-Much later, on a planet called Ahch-To-_

"Ow. Ow. Ow. Leia -ow! Ow. Ow…"

"You didn't wanna do this the easy way, Luke, so we're doing it the hard way."

A fancy-dressed older woman, roughly in her mid-50's, was dragging her twin brother by the ear through ancient ruins back to the ship she arrived in.

"I-ow, I told you, Leia, I cut myself off from the Force-OW! Is pulling me by the ear really necessary? We're twins, you know," Luke complained.

"Yeah, but I'm the older twin-" Leia began.

"Now, we don't know that for sure-OW!" Luke interrupted, only to get interrupted himself by a hard tug on the ear.

"-and besides," Leia continued. "The galaxy needs the Jedi. It needs you, Luke."

"And I sympathize -ow, but again: no Force, no longer a -ow, a Jedi," Luke tried to reason with his sister.

"Well, since you picked such an out-of-the-way planet to squat on, you should have plenty of time to reconnect to the Force on the trip back," Leia said.

"I wonder if I can get a prosthetic ear that matches my hand-OW! Ow. Ow. Ow..." Luke muttered under his breath before another rough tug on the ear.

"I heard that!"

 **-END-**

 **So yeah, this started with the simple question of "Where were your shields, Poe?" and after thinking about it (and rewatching the scene, of course), Poe was in the cockpit barely 3 seconds before the Stormtroopers started shooting his X-Wing, so no time to raise shields. And even if it was enough time, we don't know enough about the startup sequence of the T-70 to say whether or not he could raise the shields before the engines were completely spun up.**

 **As for that 'fix fic but not really' bit, the thought process for this started as "If Poe's shields were up right there, the entire plot of the movie wouldn't have happened." And then I realized "Oh, shit. If Poe's shields were up right there, the entire plot of the movie wouldn't have happened!" Poe and Finn would never have met, Rey and BB-8 would've never met, no stealing the Falcon, they never would've met Han and Chewie, Hosnian Prime would've been wasted either way, Finn wouldn't have been there to give the Resistance the intel they needed to destroy Starkiller Base, they would've had no way to disable Starkiller Base's shields, Rey would still be on Jakku instead of starting on the path of the Jedi and then she would never have been there to help Luke get out of his funk. So, yeah, Republic Senate destroyed, Death Star 3.0** _ **not**_ **destroyed, the First Order's flagship/mobile headquarters/mobile shipyard/mobile factory still exists, and the last Jedi is too busy wallowing in self-pity to help. So all-in-all, the galaxy would be worse off if Poe had had shields in that moment. Boy, the Force works in mysterious ways.**


End file.
